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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Spatzimaus" data-source="post: 3284356" data-attributes="member: 3051">Back from my trip, and so I can finally respond to the few comments.Well, our "house rules" had gotten a bit out of hand, to the point where they were nearly a separate d20 system, so we had to call them SOMETHING.  And since I was the one who came up with most of them...The campaign world itself isn't named that, of course.  (We actually use this system in three or four separate campaigns.)  But it's just a handy way of differentiating our homebrew from the "core" ruleset (3.5E with a few house rules and a couple splatbooks), which we still use on occasion.It's a lot easier to use than it first appears, once you figure out what's needed for your own character's items.  After all, most fighter-types stick with a single weapon type through their entire career, thanks to Weapon Focus and its kin.For instance, say you're a Barbarian who uses a Greatsword and a Breastplate.  The Greatsword requires 17 lbs of material, the BP needs 27.  These won't change, unless the material has a weight multiplier.Each time you get a new item, you have to look up what bonuses it gets from its materials, but after that point, it's just like anything else; you lump its bonuses in with the ones from STR, BAB, class abilities, enchantments, etc.The material Type and Source really only affected the cost/availability and whether Druids could wear it.  For the cost, the equation I used was:Cost (in gp/lb) = B * DC * S * T / WB = the cost in gp/lb of the base (DC=0) material (Iron = 1.0, Wood = 0.5, Leather = 0.2)DC = the Craft DC modifierS = Source multiplier (1.0 for Mundane, +0.5 for Planar, +0.5 for Alchemic, +0.5 if it's harvested from an intelligent creature; add all that apply)T = Type multiplier (2 for Wood, 4 for Leather or Cloth, 6 for Bone, 8 for Crystal, 10 for Metal, Plating that can be used for Plate Armor is 12, Plating that can't is 8.)W = weight multiplier (0.6 for Mithral, 0.5 for Wood); these will be more expensive in gp/lb, but since you use less, the end result item will cost roughly the same as other items of the same DC.That gave me a rough value, and I ballparked it to a multiple of 10 from there.  (For materials of low DC, I just set it by hand.)In general, it makes weapons and armor a bit more powerful, through two separate mechanisms:1> All of the high-end materials have magic Cost Reductions, reducing the cost of the total enchantment by +1.  You won't spend a small fortune getting a specific rare material unless you intended to use that enchantment anyway, so overall it's a boost in power, with a slight decrease in flexibility.2> The material bonuses all stack with magic.  (For armor this wasn't a big deal, since it was just an armor check penalty bonus, but for weapons it's an extra +1 to hit for basic mastercraft.)  For the high-end materials, this is often how it worked already, but not in all cases.The logic I've got so far is this:> Each material has a Primary and a Secondary Category, (None/Soft/Flexible/Hard), plus a Weight category.  That is, the existing armors break down as:Light:Padded: Soft/NoneLeather: Soft/SoftStudded Leather: Soft/FlexibleChain Shirt: Flexible/SoftMedium:Scale: Soft/HardChain: Flexible/FlexibleBreastplate: Hard/SoftHeavy:Banded: Flexible/HardHalf-Plate: Hard/FlexibleFull Plate: Hard/Hard(We dropped Hide, and Splint was combined with Banded.)This means that instead of keeping track of the stats for each type of armor, I instead keep 10 sets of modifiers (3 primaries, 4 secondaries, 3 weights), and you simply add the three that are appropriate for each armor.  Yes, that's pretty much the same number of sets you had before, but you also add the Material modifiers for the two materials you picked.That is, if you're wearing a Breastplate, you add the Hard Primary line to the Soft Secondary line to the Medium Weight line, add the Material modifiers for the two materials you're using, and you're done.  So instead of a Mithral BP, it's now a Mithral/Dragonhide BP.  The nice part of this is that it's easy to know how much material you need; if Hard Primary is 28 lbs, Soft Secondary is 4 lbs, and Medium Weight is 6 lbs, then you need 28 lbs of Hard material, 4 lbs of Secondary, and the last 6 lbs can be of cheap, common stuff (i.e., no real cost).  Yes, this is 38 total pounds for a 30-pound item; some of it (mostly the metal) gets wasted in the crafting process.(In general, Primaries boost AC and a little DR, Secondaries boost DR and a little AC; Primaries restrict MaxDEX, Secondaries restrict ACP.  Soft materials are weak in both DR and AC; Flexible have better DR, Hard have better AC.)One benefit of this is that it handles the weight-modifying armors better.  If a normal BP adds the HP, SS, and MW lines, a Mithral BP adds HP, SS, and LW (losing the Medium Armor bonuses and gaining the Light Armor ones.)Also, there's fewer "suboptimal" armors; Half-Plate's MaxDEX is now HIGHER than Full Plate's, not lower, since a Flexible Secondary is less restricting than a Hard Secondary.  Same goes for Armor Check Penalty and Arcane Spell Failure.  It's no longer "chain shirt, bp, full plate, or nothing"; there's still a little duplication (see below).Ongoing issues:> Shields.  Probably just going to have to be a special case.> We need to reduce the Material Bonuses, since you're now adding two for each armor set, effectively splitting each bonus list into two.  As a benchmark, 2/3rds of the bonus goes to the Primary and 1/3rd to Secondary.> Likewise, we need to reduce the DC modifiers now that two materials are being used for each item.  Again, 2/3 vs 1/3.In the process of balancing this, we're also going to try switching to a partial Armor-As-DR system.  Instead of ranging from AC 1 to AC 8 with 1-2 DR (from the Medium/Heavy perk mentioned above), we now range from AC 1 to AC 6 with ~1-7 points of DR.  Generally, we trade 1 AC for 2 DR (the 2-handed Power Attack ratio), although the DR scales with material Hardness so that it's more like 4:1 at high levels (when you're using Hardness 15-20 materials consistently.)The advantage of this is every armor is REALLY unique; when comparing Chainmail to Scale Mail to a Breastplate, you'll have one with high AC and medium DR, one with lower AC and a higher DR, and one with low AC and the medium DR but with fewer penalties to MaxDEX, ACP, etc.</blockquote>

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